This is the
question I was asked when I was recently interviewed about my website on Cape
Town's Bush Radio. Is it conceptual art? Is it digital poetry? Is it wordplay?
Is it just slogans?

The truth
is that it doesn't really lend itself to being categorised. In a broader sense
I suppose WORD ART falls into the Poetry category. That is where the major
search engines (Such as Google, Yahoo and the like) have placed it:

Although
CONCRETE
POETRY is listed as a contemporary genre, it has been around
for over 80 years and is closely associated to Visual Poetry.
Essentially it is a form of poetry that prompts the reader/viewer to SEE the
words rather than READ the words. From a very young age we are taught to read
and it becomes so ingrained in us that when we are confronted with letters
we automatically READ them - we decode and ABSTRACT their SYMBOLIC forms.
In so doing we subvert other ways of looking at the words. In fact, we are
mostly unaware that other ways of looking at the words even exist. But they
do! And that's where the concrete poet comes in. The concrete
poet consciously "brackets out" the symbolic forms of the words (UNREADING
them as it were) and looks rather at the shapes and patterns that word and
letter structures make in themselves – the CONCRETE aspect as opposed to the
ABSTRACT. It is, to use Zen parlance, "seeing things as they really are."
As the noted Zen scholar R.H. Blyth said: "Zen is the unsymbolization
of the world".

The shapes
and patterns of words and letters have their own message, an unseen, subverted
message that differs from the symbolic message. Let’s call this second message
the IMAGE message. It can happen in some instances that the IMAGE message
concords with the READ message which gives rise to interesting resonations
and tautologies. In other instances the two messages point in different directions
and the poet plays with these inner tensions.

WORD ART
is a specific term that I've used to describe my own work. It is based on
the melding of WORD (the READ message) and ART (the IMAGE message) which I've
described above. Where my work differs perhaps from other concrete
poets is that I tend to focus more on individual words than the strings
of words more commonly associated with poetry. This isolation of words gives
the individual letters more significance and much of my work is focused on
letters and letter shapes. Letters, especially, are overlooked in the READ
mode - only the full word is seen, individual letters appear irrelevant, dissapearing
as the "wood does, from the trees". If you've ever participated
in one of those "count the F's" type challenges you'll know what I mean.

A groundbreaking
feature of present day CONCRETE poetry is the use of digitally
manipulated animation. Initially the exclusive privilege of large movie and
design studios, the PC revolution levelled the playing fields. Programmes
such as Flash and Director have empowered individual concrete poets,
creating a whole new genre of digital poetry. The introduction
of the dimension of time is revolutionary. No longer are word and letter patterns
trapped in static one-dimensional structures - they can now spin, dance, play
and mutate. Texts can be given life! Indeed the etymology of the word ANIMATE
is significant here, as the ANIMUS is literally the "living spirit". The animator
breathes life into their keyboard characters, and they become stage characters,
the computer screen a STAGE rather than a PAGE.

Of course the melding of
WORD and IMAGE is just a start. With the MULTI-MEDIA platform now available
there is no limit to what other forms of media can be welded into the fray.
Previously defined boundaries between sight and sound are collapsing around
us. Works are now being produced where colours speak and soundwaves can be
seen vibrating on the screen.

And then
there is the newest dimension – INTERACTIVITY. Bandied about as a buzzword
in business for the past decade, it is only recently that the full ramifications
of interactivity for Art have been explored. The traditional paradigm of artwork
and audience is being challenged and rewritten. No longer is the audience
a PASSIVE viewer but in web based art becomes an ACTIVE participant in the
artwork. The process of interaction between artwork and audience requires
choices to be made by the viewer. The much-dreamed-of aim of an artwork to
alter its audience is given a whole new twist with the audience now capable
of altering the artwork. The result is an exciting symbiotic-type relationship
which is opening up new spaces in art hitherto undreamed of.

All of this
is very new and cutting-edge** and it will take a while yet for these artforms
to filter into the mainstream. We are now in the pioneer phase and the frontiers
are still young. A very exciting place to be...

NOTES* Wikipedia has this site
listed under Digital Poetry.
** This site was launched in 2001 and some of the pieces were made using 2001
software - so "cutting-edge" needs to be viewed in this light